Sorry, Sorry, Sorry
by Mydriasis
Summary: Sometimes, Veronica thinks she hates the Courier.


Sometimes, Veronica thought she hated the Courier. Hated the way she didn't talk, just listened and smiled gently; hated how she tried to solve all the Mojave's problems, travelling at a frenzied pace from place to place on this errand or that job; hated how easy she made it for Veronica to become accustomed to the life of a drifter after so many years living with rigid stability. Here, surrounded by smoking piles of ash that used to be Followers doctors, the bodies of her former peers slumped haphazardly in the corners where they'd fallen, she really hated the Courier. Her pneumatic gauntlet pinged and whistled, cooling down after its use in the frantic fight only moments before, deafening in the tense silence that stretched on between the two women standing in the small room of the Followers' outpost. Veronica could feel bruises forming, the aches and pains of fighting that she'd grown well-accustomed to since traveling with the Courier settling into her bones and muscles. Across the room, the Courier was panting, bleeding from a cut on her forehead while a bruise darkened over her left eye and cheek. A cacophony of cloistering emotions clawed to the surface as Veronica looked over the carnage in the room, and she found herself breathing heavily, her breath coming raspy and high-pitched like the cool-down sequence of her power fist. She was waging a losing battle against tears and tremors.

"This is all your fault," she snarled at the Courier suddenly, rounding to face her. The Courier was still across the room recovering from the intensity of the battle, shivering against a desk, her revolver forgotten on a nearby table. The Courier stared at Veronica, confusion and hurt plain to see on her usually neutral face.

"If-if you hadn't shown up," Veronica started, trembling all over and teeth bared, "I'd still be a procurement specialist, I wouldn't be banished from the Brotherhood, I could still be with my family!"

"I know," the Courier said, her voice small and pitiful, "I'm sorry."

Anger flared in Veronica, because she knew this wasn't the Courier's fault, not really. It was her own fault, her own decisions that ultimately culminated with this senseless orgy of revenge and slaughter around her. She knew the Courier knew it wasn't her fault, either, that Veronica was lashing out in response to the stress of leaving her home, of having to kill the men she grew up with; yet the Courier took Veronica's anger and misplaced guilt and shouldered it like a pack, ready and willing to take the burden of responsibility so Veronica didn't have to. It's the same thing the Courier did for everyone she met, taking their problems and gladly making them her's, just to give them some small reprieve in the harsh world of the Mojave. Veronica hated her for it.

So Veronica did the only thing her grief-addled brain could tell her to do, sick with emotion and anxiety; she let the Courier take all of her problems.

"Why didn't you just leave me at the 188," Veronica demanded, pointing an accusing finger at her companion. "Why did you have to suck me in to your revenge plan, with your goddamn savior's complex? Promises of travel and adventure," she scoffed, "at what cost to me, Courier? Did you ever think about me?"

The Courier shook her head, averting her eyes from her livid friend. "God, no, Veronica," she said, "I'm sorry." The Courier didn't point out that Veronica asked to come, jumped at the chance to shrug off her role as a glorified grocery shopper for the Brotherhood to see all that the Mojave had to offer. The Courier didn't mention she thought of no one else's wellbeing but Veronica's; taking a full night's watch after an arduous day so Veronica could sleep, brushing off her own hunger so Veronica could have a larger portion at dinner, engaging enemies first so Veronica didn't risk her own health more than strictly necessary. Veronica knew this, knew the Courier cherished her and protected her, knew she was wrong for attacking her friend like this. Her rage was punctuated by the cold grip of guilt, and she let the Courier take that too, because she knew the Courier would. Veronica hated her for it.

"And this!" Veronica continued, her voice high and frantic as she fished for something in her pack, finding it and holding aloft the deceptively innocuous toy gun that commanded the terrifying power of Archimedes II. "Of all the technology to show Elder McNamara, any on the list I gave you, you chose this! The Elder didn't give it two glances before he dismissed it. And why did you choose this? Because it was less travel? You'll walk the length of Nevada to look for a dog brain, but you won't spend a week on the Long 15 to look for better technology? This was my one chance to convince the Brotherhood to rejoin the world, and you squandered it!" Veronica chucked the gun across the room, hearing the crack as it hit the wall near the Courier, though it did not give her the satisfaction she had hoped.

"I'm sorry, Veronica!" The Courier cried desperately, wiping away tears in earnest now. "I should have listened, I'm sorry!" The Courier did not tell Veronica that they had decided, together, to show Elder McNamara Euclid's C-Finder. She didn't remind her that they had both agreed that any of the technology on Veronica's list was worthy, and that they might as well go to Helios ONE because it was close by. She didn't argue that they could have gotten any of the technology on that list, or all of it, and it still would not have been enough to sway McNamara's decision. She didn't tell Veronica any of that, because Veronica remembered those conversations just as well as she did. Veronica hated her for it.

"I looked to you for guidance," Veronica said, voice quiet and wobbly with tears as she grew exhausted by the enormity of her misplaced rage. "I left the Brotherhood, I went to join the Followers, because you said I should. I trusted you to have my best interest at heart, but you didn't! If it wasn't for you, these doctors would still be alive, and my friends, too!" She gesticulated wildly around the room, at the gore of her former peers splattered against the walls and the steaming ash piles on the floor. And then, quietly, she said, "I hate you."

The Courier had brought her hands to cover her face, gingerly touching the bruises blossoming along her cheek. "I know you do," she said miserably, "and I'm sorry." The Courier didn't remind her that the bunker never truly felt like home after her parents were killed for the glory of the Brotherhood, because Veronica remembers telling the Courier that story over dinner one night. The Courier didn't tell her that she would have eventually abandoned the bunker, either on her own volition or banished as a dissenter, because Veronica knew that, too. The Courier didn't argue that it was the Brotherhood's own awful paranoia, as deeply engrained into its members as their Codex, that caused the death of the doctors, and the need to put down the rogue Paladins like one would a pack of rabid dogs. She didn't remind Veronica that her abuse was unfair and misplaced, she simply accepted it as readily as Veronica was willing to give it to her. Veronica hated her for it.

"Sorry, sorry, sorry," Veronica mocked viciously, her voice a cruel caricature of the Courier's voice. She stalked towards her companion, still wielding her anger like a shield. "Sometimes sorry isn't enough, Courier!" The Courier nodded, mumbled something that sounded like _I know, I know_ , and laid her hand on Veronica's elbow.

Veronica wanted to continue, wanted to berate the Courier for things she didn't do and things she wasn't responsible for, because she knew the Courier would take it and Veronica still had so many overwhelming emotions gnawing at her like a starving nightstalker. But something about being close to the Courier now-with no distance to shield herself from hearing her friend's plaintive words, her gentle hands, the hurt in her eyes that were usually twinkling with a good-natured smile-gave her pause. She was reminded of travel and freedom, of the Courier taking her anywhere she'd like to go, of just how much the Courier had become less of a mere travelling companion and every bit a dear friend. She pulled the Courier, still whispering her apologies to Veronica, into a crushing, desperate hug.

Tears flowed freely, smearing the soot of the singe marks from glancing blows of laser pistols from their earlier battle and staining the leather panels on the Courier's leather armor. Veronica mumbled her own apologies, begging forgiveness, even as her own cruel words echoed in her head that _sorry isn't enough_. The spurning of Elder McNamara, absconding from the stability of Brotherhood, the death of the doctors by her peers' hands and the death of her peers by her own hands—too much to take, in too few days. She told the Courier as much, and then more _sorry, sorry, sorry_.

"Don't apologize," The Courier would say whenever Veronica begged her forgiveness, still wrapped around her companion. She could feel the Courier hiccupping from the wind-down of her own emotions, the enormous burden of having to shoulder Veronica's guilt and rage and sadness. Veronica couldn't hate her for it. The Courier, always understanding, always so kind to those who needed it. Veronica couldn't hate her for that, either.

Sometimes she thought she hated the Courier, but she never really did.


End file.
